tres are restricted to which movies are allowed to be shown. The film versions of Lolita were censored more strictly than the book due to ratings that restricted viewers, they were edited, and because of the greater awareness of child abuse in the 1990s. The 50s was a time when "the raciest sex manual available to the panting adolescent was 'Love Without Fear'...and even Norman Mailer, in the 'Naked and the Dead' had to write 'fug' instead of you-know-what." (Jong) Vladimir Nabakov had just finished writing Lolita in the spring of 1954 and immediately began looking for a publisher. It was first issued in 1955 in Paris after several American rejections. Maurice Girodias of Olympia Press, "condemned by some as a porn king, praised by others as the 'Lenin of the sexual revolution,' took on the book when others were too afraid of censorship to try." (Jong) Lolita was later banned by the French government for two years and retained by U.S. customs, but when it was brought to America three years later it became a "publishing phenomenon, eventually selling some 14 million copies." (von Busack). Eventually Lolita became a rival for Ulysses as the masterpiece of the 20th Century. "Like most famous literary books, Lolita seduced the world for the wrong reasons. It was thought to be dirty...it won its first passionate proponents by being banned." (Jong). Lolita was called pornography by critics who hadn't even read the book. During its time, Lolita was " a genuinely new creation and genuinely new creations do not usually fare well...American Puritanism is more comfortable with sex when it stays in the gutter than when it rises to the level of art." (Jong). But, it was read in all its unedited glory. There were no holes, and it was published just the way Nabakov had written it. The only censorship for novels is in the lack of publishing support. So, overall, the book version of Lolita fared far better than what was to come for its fil...
